Veruschka von Lehndorff and Franco Rubartelli met and fell in love. So it was inevitable that the model and photographer would eventually collaborate professionally. Veruschka was very tall—too tall for commercial fashion campaigns—so the lovers turned to body-painting, fabric-draping, feathers, and paillettes in their earliest photographs, soon catching the eye of Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. The two began shooting in exotic locales for the magazine, resulting in this photo in Brazil for Vogue in 1968. ­Veruschka’s long tresses are curled and teased into ’60s perfection, and the dress she wears is not a dress at all, but a graphic tapestry by Brazilian artist Genaro de Carvalho. Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, the chain-smoking Italian textile, fashion, and jewelry designer, who always wore piles of necklaces and whose aesthetic tended toward the wild and exotic, styled the shot and ­provided the oversize gold earrings that are unequivocally the star of the show. The earrings recall ancient African tribal styles and spiral into a perfect Fibonacci golden ratio shape. Sant’Angelo, ­Rubartelli told Vogue, “was an artist in creating jewelry.”

(Franco Rubartelli/Condé Nast/Getty)